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HowTo: line length check

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Kite lines take a lot of strain. Even the best lines can stretch over time. If your kite is flying skew it’s time to check your line length.

As with all our products, we pay particular attention to the quality of our lines. We work together with LIROS, who are the leading manufacturer of high-performance Sailing ropes, who manufacture our lines in Germany.The lines are specially pre-stretched with a “Heat stretched” process. The entire line length, from the Chicken loop, over the depower lines to the end of the flight lines are pre-stretched with 200kg.

As a result of this it is unlikely that your lines have become stretched but its best practice to check from time to time. The better the lines are trimmed the more stable the kite will fly. Only a correctly trimmed bar will guarantee you one hundred percent fun on the water.

Take Beanies unhooked kite loops as an example. The loop is performed in one prime direction resulting in his lines being stressed on one side. To ensure that everything keeps going smoothly he’ll check his line lengths from time to time and make adjustments as required.

How is it done?

First find yourself a free open area that will allow you to lay your bar out completely. After you have laid out your lines attach the line ends to a fixed point.

Attaching...

The different pigtail configurations, as either knots or loops, ensure that no-one can accidently swap the front and backlines around; but they may not appear to be practical right now. Simply tie them with a knot? No, that’s not precise enough. Construct a reciprocal attachment? You might be old by then.

The solution is much simpler. Due to both the knot and the loop pigtail attachments having the same length it’s easy to resolve the attachment dilemma by opening the loops, to which the pigtails are attached, a little and then placing the spliced ends of the flight lines to a hook in the wall or a nail in wood.

Naturally you might need to perform a quick check and hooks are not exactly abundant at kite spots around the world. The simple solution is to use your leash – loop your leash around a tree or a pole and then attach the loops to the carabiner. Sorted!

The actual check

After attaching the lines it’s time for the actual check. Go to your bar and engage your lines. Please ensure that your adjuster is completely open, trim lines are not pulled, to ensure a correct result.

Once the bar is in the fully powered position all lines should ideally have the same amount of tension. If this isn’t the case you will need to trim the lines.

In order to trim the lines you will need to move the floater up – revealing a succession of knots which can be used to adjust the length of the back lines. If you’re lucky you can utilise one of the existing knots, if not you can simply tie an additional knot or move one of the existing knots.To check that the two front lines are 100% trimmed attach the bar to the chicken loop. Now engage the front lines and check that the knots on the pigtails are lying next to each other. If this isn’t the case simply open the knot and move it to the right position.

To end off with check the line length again and repeat the above process until the result is perfect.

Voilà! That’s it. Your bar is now perfectly trimmed and nothing stands in the way of an equally perfect session.

Possible questions may be answered by viewing the first few minutes of the following video about our ESP bar, in which we guide you through the process, step by step.

Behind the scenes

Life is a journey. Kiteboarding has taken us to the best spots on the planet and allowed us to get to know the local kiters from all corners of the globe. At the same time we have been able to delve into the technology behind the products that we use on a daily basis and catch a glimpse behind the scenes of the kite industry. There are many interesting characters behind the products and it became clear to us, that CORE is not only made up of a team from the Fehmarn Island but instead is made up of people from the world’s beaches. Therefore we became a part of something much bigger.

The idea behind our web-experiment CoreNation is to allow us to share our experiences with you. We want to take you with us on our journeys and share our adventures, experiences and our daily work with you. Enjoy!